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Do you really believe this was Luther's fresh idea?At least you did not attempt to remove James from the Bible, which was Luther’s solution.
James was a disputed book going into Trent:
Luther when speaking of Revelation and James, did question apostolic authorship. However never deep sixed any NT books. His translation had 27 NT books.
I will point out I disagree with Luther's reasoning. I will also point out he was not the only 16th Century theologian who had misgivings about some NT books.
Once again, we have Cardinal Catajen who was more zealous than Luther, yet was not excommunicated and actually a top theologian at Trent:
Cajetan Responds by Jared Wicks:
Cajetan's biblical commentaries occasioned no little admiratio. From Luther, there is a recorded remark, "Cajetan, in his later days, has become Lutheran." Considerable zeal was expended by Ambrosius Catharinus, O.P., against the exegetical work of his retired Master General. Catharinus submitted a denunciation before the still acerbic faculty in Paris and proceedings began that could have led to another book-burning Clement VII intervened in a letter to the Parisian professors in September, 1533, to protect the man who was by then the Pope's regular source of valued theological advice. Proceedings were halted at this time in Paris, but not before an open letter of the Parisian theologians had begun to circulate listing the censurable propositions excerpted from the commentaries. The Sorbonne masters charged Cajetan with imprudently taking these notions from Erasmus or even Luther. The letter ended with a stinging rebuke of Cajetan's rashness in abandoning the long approved Vulgate text to base his work on new versions in no way guaranteed for their exactness. In 1534 a Wittenberg printer, no doubt with considerable glee over this discomfiture of Luther's old adversary, brought out the open letter in pamphlet form. Catharinus published his criticisms of Cajetan's commentaries in 1535, revised and expanded them in 1542, and obtained a censure by the Paris faculty against Cajetan's biblical works in August, 1544.
The specific charges brought against Cajetan concerned the reservations and plain doubts he had expressed about the apostolic origin of the final eleven verses of Mark's gospel, the story of the adultress in John 8, and five whole epistles of the New Testament (Hebrews, James, Jude, and 1 and 2 John). These views were especially serious in Cajetan's case, since he had laid down the rule that apostolic authorship or direct approval by an apostle was normative for inclusion in the New Testament canon. Following Jerome, Cajetan also relegated the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament to a secondary place where they could serve piety but not the teaching of revealed doctrine.
Jared Wicks tr., Cajetan Responds: A Reader in Reformation Controversy (Washington: The Catholic University Press of America, 1978).
Cajetan Responds
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